The first Ice Cream Sandwich handset, the Galaxy Nexus, hit the UK this week (US launch coming soon) and AnandTechhas benchmarked the ICS/Galaxy Nexus combo vs. the iPhone 4S/iOS 5 combo. The Galaxy Nexus processor/GPU isn’t groundbreaking by any means, but the new software inside is certainly packing a punch beating iOS in a few key areas. As seen in the graph to the right, the Galaxy Nexus has a slightly faster tested browser than the iPhone 4S — a crucial day-to-day necessity for users.

The Galaxy Nexus also comes up with the win in JavaScript loading, bringing faster load times than the Droid RAZR and iPhone 4S. Don’t think the Galaxy Nexus is going to come away with everything, however. Both Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2 outperform the Galaxy Nexus in GPU loading — which is limited by its slower SGX 540 underneath. That’s an important consideration for gaming.

The Galaxy Nexus’s hardware has been dubbed very smooth compared to older versions of Android. Google is activating 550,000 Android devices a day and is still behind iOS in total Activations at 200 million total. Head after the break for more graphs.